On the weekend of February 8, 2020, we travelled to Vancouver to attend the annual boat show. I was feeling pretty excited, we were in the final planning stages of the big sailing trip. I’d be quitting my job soon and in the summer we’d push off indefinitely. We were barely a month into the twenties and the potential was boundless.

We purchased a life raft, visited friends, and took the kids to see a basketball game at UBC. At some point Sarah asked if I thought this virus in the news would impact our travel plans.

Pfffffff! What virus!? I had no idea what she was talking about. There’s always something in the news to worry about. It would take a global pandemic to derail us now!

And so the trip was pushed back as we spent the next 2 years monitoring global lockdowns from behind cloth masks. We managed to avoid covid all that time, but it finally tracked us down in La Cruz, Mexico, in 2023. Sarah tested positive at the beginning of January just as my sister and niece arrived for a visit.

It was a bit of a juggling act trying to keep everyone isolated. Where do you quarantine a person when you all live in one room? The bilge? The engine compartment? Eventually we installed a plastic wall to isolate the v-berth in the bow. Luckily Sarah had a fairly mild case and miraculously avoided passing it to anyone else.

We always love a visit from my sister Erika. She has this knack for getting hit by big waves at the beach that everyone else sees coming miles away. It happened at Venice Beach and it happened again here. As a particularly large swell sucked all the water off the beach she excitedly rushed forward to look at the newly revealed shells and rocks. As the roaring intensified and the other beachgoers picked up their towels, she crouched down right at the roiling waters edge, debating whether the white one or the speckled one was prettier. When the looming wave shadowed the sun, she frowned and held the rocks closer for inspection, as the rest of us looked on in horror.

“Why did nobody warn me!?” she sputtered, before disappearing again in the churning surf. I should mention she was wearing her street clothes, because she legitimately had no intention of going in the water. She emerged at last with, “I didn’t even get my rock!!”

It must have been a great rock. Their visit was too short, we missed them before they had even left.

La Cruz is a small town on Banderas Bay, near Puerto Vallarta. It’s a beautiful community with a nice central plaza, cobblestone streets, and colourful buildings and art. Foreign to us, the community sort of comes alive around 6:30pm. Many of the food vendors don’t even open until then, when people start to take to the streets to socialize in cooler temperatures.

On one of these evenings we accidentally stumbled into the “Kings Day” celebration, an event marking the end of the Christmas festivities. The boat kids joined in with the hordes of local children to swing at piñatas and partake in free candy, king cake, and a strange corn/chocolate drink. When one of the piñatas would hit the ground the crowd of adorable children turned savage with the candy frenzy. I had to avert my eyes as one piñata after another was brutally dismembered by the sugar crazed mob.

We stayed in La Cruz for more than 3 weeks, so long that our anchor chain turned into a fuzzy green underwater ecosystem.

Spending this long in one place really gave us a chance to dial in the local street food scene. As a frugalitarian my dietary needs are unusual. Expensive meals can taste bitter and cause indigestion, whereas a great deal on the exact same meal is invigorating and delicious. Mexico is a frugalitarian paradise. It’s pretty easy to find a meal out for the whole family for under $20 Canadian, pretty delicious pricing! By the end of three weeks we’d tracked down more legendary deals. It’s possible to feed 8 people pork tacos from a takeout place for 200 pesos total (~$14). At these prices, we could feed our family nothing but tacos, 3 meals a day, for around $630/month, substantially less than the cost of groceries. We wouldn’t even get scurvy, because every taco place throws in a whole sack of limes with every order^**.

The only thing that could pull us away from La Cruz were whispered rumours of another anchorage further south. Tenacatita. A promised land where packs of kids roam the beaches like wild horses, with family friendly surfing and snorkelling nearby.

It sounds too good to be true, we’ll let you know!

_{** The long term health impacts of a purely frugalitarian diet are not well understood at this time. Undertake at your own risk.}

Some photos…